Draperies and Reveries: W.B. Yeats and the Aesthetic of the Background.

This article examines W.B. Yeats's significant but often overlooked interest in theatre textiles and decorative scenography, focusing on his reflections about backcloths, curtains, and fabric-based stage design as integral to his conception of performance. It highlights Yeats's engagement with Edward Gordon Craig's innovative use of large fabric backdrops in early 1900s London productions, particularly Craig's staging of Purcell's opera *Dido and Aeneas*, which influenced Yeats's aesthetic of minimal, symbolic, and pictorial stage backgrounds. Through Yeats's letters, essays, and surviving sketches, the article traces how Yeats developed a theory of "decorative scenery" that emphasized simplicity, economy, and the visual relationship between actors and backgrounds, contrasting with naturalistic scene-painting. The study also explores Yeats's practical challenges with theatre production, his collaboration with contemporaries, and the lasting impact of Craig's screens and fabric-based scenography on Yeats's theatrical vision.